Manually operated rolling profiler instruments are emerging into the field of commercial profiling as a viable economic alternative to the cumbersome and labour intensive, as well as slow, rod and level method of survey, including straightedge surveys.
Foremost, profiling of runways, highways, raceways, parkades and bridge decks is required to monitor construction of these structures for conformance with design and traffic safety specifications. Surface profiling of runways and highways is necessary at regular seasonal intervals to determine the roughness value as a measure of pavement deterioration for maintenance purposes.
Previous methods of surface profiling have embodied inherent problems, such as that they are time consuming, cumbersome to operate and susceptible to acceleration and deceleration.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for relatively easy, quick and accurate measurement of a surface profile, from which roughness or smoothness index values can be computed.